Okay. It’s been long enough. This is the ninth Fetish Friday post, it is about damn time that I tell you about my very favourite fetish, my very first fetish, the kink about which I am most passionate, and the skill to which I am most powerfully attracted:

You are feeling sleeeeeeepy…

EROTIC HYPNOSIS!

Yes, I am a hypnokinkster.

Now, dear reader, you might be thinking to yourself, Sarah! You’ve been so open with us! If you’re so passionate about this, why have you waited until now to share?

Well, the truth is, erotic hypnosis is one of those kinks that, while much more common than it seems, tends to be auto-filed under OMG TOO WEIRD FOR ME before it’s given a fair shake. So I wanted to warm you up to the Fetish Friday Feature with material that’s a little more culturally recognizable, things you’ve probably run across in various articulations of pop culture, before taking you into territory that is lesser known to the general public.

The first time I went out in public in men’s formal wear was the day of my graduation from University of Winnipeg. A great deal of the time I was wearing my robes and regalia, but when the suit itself was revealed, the compliments began flowing. I was happy, I felt confident, I felt comfortable, and I felt a delicious sense of inner consistency. I wasn’t just celebrating my academic achievements that day. I was celebrating my growth, owning and occupying my identity. I felt beautiful. I felt handsome. I felt loved. I felt AWESOME.

I considered this the outfit’s dry-run before its main debut event the following weekend: a Mennonite wedding. Now, before you go leaping to any conclusions about covered heads, barns, farmer sausage and borscht, I should qualify that it wasn’t that much different from your standard modern Christian wedding. The bride and groom were (and are) both wonderful, socially progressive, compassionate, cool people, and that is why I accepted the invitation to celebrate their wedding with them.

Hooray, it’s Sunday again, and that means more cute! We are greatly enjoying the warm weather and the cool breezes coming through the open windows. This time of year, Jack and I like to hang out on the balcony sometimes to watch the birds, squirrels, and children skittering about the back lanes, so Jack has to wear his collar, just in case. I present to you, enthusiastic Jack at his classiest:

WHY ARE BIRDS?!

Yes, I made the bow tie. No, it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. Have a lovely Sunday, friends and neighbours.

Here we are again on Fetish Friday! Last week, we talked about spanking and its various psychological and physiological appeals and effects. I promised you last week that I would explain subspace in a forthcoming post, and here is that post! For the uninitiated, you might think that I am talking about some kind of high-tech encrypted communications protocol, or the deep web, a video game, or sub-basements, but in the kink and fetish world, subspace is a whole other thing.

No, not this subspace either. (img: scottpilgrim.wikia.com)

As I mentioned last week, “subspace” is the term we use for the altered state of consciousness that a sub can achieve through prolonged intense stimulation, pain/trauma play and multiple subsequent endorphin floods. For those who don’t know about altered states of consciousness, an altered state is basically a state in which your brainwaves are functioning in ways other than your basic defaults of “awake and alert” and “sleeping”. This is a very basic definition, as brains are complicated and even the foremost neuroscientists aren’t quite sure how exactly they work, so analyses of the nature of subspace tend to be largely anecdotal. This one will be no different; as always, I write primarily from my experience and the experiences of those who’ve shared with me.

So! What does subspace feel like?

Selfies and hashtags. They’re everywhere. I mean, self-portraits are not a new thing. The word “selfie” is quite new, as words go; Oxford’s 2013 Word of the Year first appeared online back in 2002, but the word “selfie” carries connotations beyond the simple act of self-portraiture. Selfies are now inextricably woven into the fabric of contemporary social media, usually taken at arm’s length with a mobile device of some sort, but always shared on social media, usually on multiple platforms (crossposts between instagram, facebook, and twitter being among the most common).

God kills a *lot* of kittens, you guys.

The cultural phenomenon of the instant-share self-portrait has been developing since the days of the myspace photo and the early years of popular access to digital photography. It’s only in the last few years, though, that the selfie has become a cultural entity, owing to increased access to higher quality mobile devices and the ubiquity of social media platforms like facebook, twitter, and instagram, social media’s current darling. And now we have this new phenomenon of the campaign selfie, the next big thing in hashtag activism, a self-portrait shared with social media for the purpose of raising awareness or expressing an opinion about a sociopolitical matter of some sort. Usually it involves holding up a sign of some kind. Everyone’s doing it. Even Michelle Obama.

I hope you are having as beautiful a spring day as we are here in Montreal. The trees are finally in leaf, and it seems like a great day to take a book to the park and enjoy the outdoors. Choosing the wrong book may result in injury related to lasers and/or fire.

So! Spankings! Generally, the first thing people seem to think of when I say “kinky” (at least, those of a more vanilla/uninitiated persuasion) is usually something along the lines of “Oh, like, spankings and stuff?”

Yes! Like spankings and stuff! Let’s talk about spankings. It seems like a pretty simple concept, right? Take someone over your knee and give their ass a good sound walloping. But it’s not quite so simple as that. There’s a real skill, dare I say an art, to giving a really good erotic spanking, the kind of spanking that leaves the sub flushed and hot and begging for more.